James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I talk to primary school principals on a regular basis and I am the chair of a board of management of a primary school myself. An idea I particularly want to highlight is that, increasingly, teachers and principals are meeting young children who have physically and intellectually nothing wrong with them, but who are presenting with speech and language developmental issues and social developmental issues. They are simply not getting the exposure they need before they come to school. This is adding to the pressure on principals and increasingly to comorbidity and multi-complex needs, both between disability and mental health needs. All this is putting intolerable pressure on school principals and teachers, especially when they are presenting at such a young age. I ask that two practical things be done in the short term. In particular for small primary schools, there should be an increase in the number of release days for school principals so they can attend for mental health training. Very small primary schools have limited release days and tell me that they find they have difficulty in getting the days away to get the necessary training to do the courses, some of which are quite good and available. Second, I ask for an increase in the flexibility of the appeals process. Certain primary schools may have three, four or five students starting this year, but their hours are set for special needs assistants, SNAs, and support hours from the previous year, but they may not have lost any children from sixth class who perhaps had support. In other words, they find a pinch point where they are under very real person. I think those are two practical things that could be done in the short term.

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